The present invention relates to cereal grain treatment for efficiently obtaining by-products of the grain. More particularly, the present invention relates to methods of cereal grain preparation that eliminate water and chemicals to prepare milling (in this case endosperm flour) for production of ethyl alcohol, bioethanol, starch, glucose-fructose syrup, and other products of grain hydrolysis. Further, the present invention relates to subsequent methods of mash preparation including water and using mechano-activation.
Known prior art technology requires the use of water in the process of removing outer layers of grain. The water addition requires the peeling process to include additional stages such as initial wetting and tempering of the grain. Specifically, current practices of removal of outer layers from grain kernels (called “peeling”), involve either grain soaking in water, or treating the grain with chemicals (such as strong bases) along with the subsequent peeling of outer layers via mechanical treatment. These current practices have major drawbacks, such as large volumes of water and chemicals used in the process, the use of a number of complicated operations requiring costly equipment, and high wheat quality demands. By high wheat quality demands, it is meant that broken grain has to be separated before the peeling process. This makes current methods unsuitable for alcohol and bioethanol industries, since these industries use fodder (feeder) wheat. Furthermore, the above mentioned peeling methods increase grain moisture content by 20% to 30%, whereas grain moisture content higher than 12% to 15% hampers the milling of grain kernels in the grain mill.
Another problem is found as the mash is further processed in a practice known as mechano-activation. Specifically, milled non-peeled starch-containing raw material (wheat) causes poor performance of the mechano-activation process by causing premature failure of mechano-activation equipment, due to coarse and abrasive particles such as sand and other impurities present on the surface of the grain. The resulting problems with mechano-activation equipment may consist of regular equipment clogging up and premature deterioration (excessive wear) of the rotating cylinders, which are the core elements of the mechano-activation equipment. Specifically, the drawbacks of known methods causing premature failure of the mechano-activation equipment are due in part to the abrasive and coarse particles present in the mixture, and also are due to the low efficiency of the mechano-activation process due to insufficient starch solubilization and low enzyme activation levels.